


The Cost of Doing Business

by karrenia_rune



Category: Gargoyles
Genre: Gen, Promptfic, deals and counter deals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-17
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-31 08:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hyena is feeling that her unique skill sets are getting rusty and wants to make a splash in the mercenary business in a big way, but finding jobs that are willing to hire are becoming few and far between; in steps Fox, her former teammate on the Pack, but can she trust her?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Title: The Cost of Doing Business  
Fandom: Gargoyles, general series  
Author: karrenia_rune  
Rating: General  
Characters: Hyena, Fox  
Prompt #08 weeks  
77/100

Disclaimer: Gargoyles, the Animated Series belong to Disney and Buena Vista Television. It is not mine.

 

“The Cost of Doing Business” by karrenia

She normally was not one for doing the bar scene, but there were times when she needed to get out, get a change of scenery, and doing so did not require either the presence or approval from her brother. Heyna put the finishing touches on her rouged up-slanting cheek-bones and a touch of coral –colored lipstick on her mouth and then capped and pocketed her makeup into her hand-bag.

That done, Hyena stepped into the bar with its glittering marque proclaiming the place as the Blue Iris, paying the cover fee as she went in. She elbowed her way through the seating area, aware without appearing that she was aware of the various reactions her appearance evoked in the diverse and noisy crowd.

Had she had wanted to do the bar scene, with all of its clichéd pick-up lines and awkward fumbling through the motions she would chose to wear her slinky low-cut dresses instead of, for her, a more subdued mauve dressy pant-suit.

She sat down in a vacant stool at the bar and planted her elbows on the smooth polished, catching the bar-tender’s eye, “Hey, I’d like a martini on the rocks and keep’em coming.”

“Sure,” he replied. “Anything you say.”

Her drinks arrived, salty and sweet and she had enjoyed about three in a half drinks when she sensed rather than saw another person com into the bar, take a moment to give the entire first floor room a quick and penetrating appraisal, and deliberate choose to sit down in the only available stool next to her In the back of her mind Hyena thought, ‘Can’t a girl catch a damn break in this town?’.

And given from various tell-tale signs that Hyena had learned or had had drilled into from her years working as a mercenary, the person obviously wanted something from her. She turned just a fraction of an inch

Hyena sniffed and then barked out the high-pitched laughter that had earned her nickname among her former comrade-in –arms, the Pack.

“Mosey on along, this is my night off, so just you piss off,” she muttered.

The woman did not flinch but she did remove the hood from her jacket and replied. “How did you know it was me?”

“Come on, Fox, it’s not like you were making it very difficult. I know it was you from about five ten tables away. That confident swagger gives you away every time.”

Fox nodded her head and replied: “And that outfit you’re wearing wouldn’t have been chosen to say, cover up any of your, shall we, say, enhancements, would it?” Fox, to her way of thinking, was more than willing to sally a few early gives before going in for the far more serious conversational blows.

“Cheap-shot, I here I would have thought as Ms. Money-bags you would have had more class than that.”

Fox bristled, her red hair floating around her head in the wind from the over-head ceiling fan but she kept her temper. Hyena had always had a short fuse and she had not tracked her from her current apartment building to this bar just to exchange blows, she had a far more important game in mind.

“Look, if you want us to come back and work for you, there’s no amount of money in the world that will make us agree to that,” Hyena replied as she down the last of the martini in front of her and signaled the bar-tender that she wanted another.

“Then you and your brother are doing fine on your own?” Fox asked.

“We do well enough,” Hyena replied. “But thanks for caring; I’ll be certain to tell my brother that you cared enough to chat.”

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with the failure to destroy the Sun Amulet a few weeks ago, would it?” Fox asked ignoring what she thought was Hyena’s rather juvenile nonchalance and impertinence for the moment.

“Nah,” so you just mosey on along. Don’t call us, we’ll may or may not call you.”

“We’ve known each other a long time, Hyena,” Fox said quietly, pitched low enough that she was not overly worried about someone else over-hearing in the noisy and crowded bar, but knowing that the other women could hear perfectly well what with her cyborg-enhancements.

“Those did not come cheaply, and I‘ve done my homework that you’re not as financially well-enough as you want me to believe.”

“So what?” Hyena hissed back. “What are you saying that if Jackal and I don’t get back on bard your crazy money train, you’ll call in a return on your investment?” Screw that! I’m outta here.”

Hyena rose to her feet and stalked away before Fox could react and watched her wave and bob through the crowd, knocking plates and glasses to the floor, and pushing aside servers and patrons alike.

Fox, quickly recovering, followed in her trail and soon caught up with her and grabbed the shorter woman’s arm in a vise grip and twisted it painfully. “Look, I know that right now you wouldn’t believe me if I told up was down and down was up, but I’m offering you a chance to come back into the fold. It’s in your own best interests.”

“Piss off!” Hyena twisted a fraction of an inch to one side and broke the grip on her arm.

“You wouldn’t have a clue what was in my own best interests. You never did!”

Fox had the grace to flinch both from the angry tirade and the pure fury blazing out of  
Hyena’s eyes. “What did I ever do to you?”

“You’re so damn arrogant,. So damn ambitious, and you used the Pack and my brother and I, like you use everyone else!”

“I, I, never thought of it that way,” Fox whispered, “And for what’s it’s worth, I am sorry.”

“Not that it makes much difference at this point,” Hyena muttered back.

“So, now what?” Fox asked.

“So, you go back to your nice rich life and I’ll go back to my mercenary life, and we agree not to mention this little head-to-head to anyone, capiche?”

“I’d agree, in principle,” Fox replied. “If only it were that simple.”

“Why complicate things?” Hyena asked with another of her high-pitched laughs. “Seems simple enough to me.”

“Because, I do need to inform you that the next offer that comes down the line is from a third party business affiliated with Xanatos Enterprises.”

“Good grief! Don’t you ever take ‘no’ for an answer. Give it up already!”

“All I’m saying is that when you return to your apartment that you take some time to go over the terms of the contract and talk it over with your brother; that’s all.”

“Great, great,” Hyena sighed as she reached up and finger-combed her ruby-painted nails through her shoulder-length brown hair. “Whatever you say. I am officially outta here. And with that she stalked off, the heels of her boots making pinging sound on the asphalt pavement of the sidewalks.


	2. Mood to Burn Bridges

The cursing and the slamming of the door and the resounding beat of steel-toed heels on the linoleum floor of their hotel room were the first signs that his little sister was in a mood. Jackal was in the midst of peeling back the plastic label on his beer can when she came into the room. 

“What’s up?” he casually asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she muttered angrily. After a moment or two of silent fuming Hyena sat down in one of the four chairs clustered around a table. She tossed her clutch hand-bag on top of it and said:   
“Let me rephrase that, I don’t want have to deal with it, but talking it over might help.”

“Sounds pretty intense, what’s got you all worked up?”

“In a word, Fox.”

“That, that, ….” Jackal began to sputter and then trailed off. With a shrug he said: “Shall we content ourselves with calling her a conniving, controlling pain in the neck and leave it at that?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” muttered Hyena, adding, “but yes, that about sums it up. Have we gotten any contract bids lately?”

“No, not lately, why do you ask?”

“Because I gave our old ‘friend’the impression that we rolling in moola. I told her that our independent mercenary lives sans the Pack was just peachy-keen, jelly-bean.”

Jackal sighed and then said: “Do you think she was trying to bluff, rub your nose in the fact that we can’t all marry uber-rich multi-billionaires?

Hyena shook her head and kicked off her boots, before she looked up and locked gazes with her older brother, “Maybe, maybe not." 

“Well, it’s not going as well as I would have liked, but we do all right. I doubt that we might get offered another contract with Cyberbiotics, not after the debacle that went down in Guatemala.

“For the record that wasn’t really our fault,” interrupted Hyena.

“I know, I know,” agreed Jackal. “But, even when Fox was with the Pack I got the distinct feeling that she never really had what one would call a ‘relationship’ with her daddy, and he’s the CEO of Cyberbiotics, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, but he’s pushing ninety if he’s a day.”

“So, what?”

“We could work around that, and it’s not like we have to stay in Manhattan, I’ve heard tell of an ex-FBI agent down in Miami that does odd jobs for people and is looking for extra hands, and with our unique skill   
sets and with the right persuasion I think we’d do well enough to not only get the job but settle down somewhere warm and sunny.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought. Make the call,” replied Hyena pursing her ruby-red lips together in relief and relieved tension. Despite her bravado she had been more worried about Fox’s implied threats than she had been willing to let on to her brother or herself.

***  
The mild climes of Florida as yet untasted Jackal and Hyena met with their contact at the appointed time in a tavern and the well-dressed man wearing a fedora sitting at a corner booth nodded and invited them to sit down. He then passed them two tumblers of whiskey.

“I’m glad that you could make it,” he drawled in a thick Eastern European accent, taking a sip from his own glass of vodka mixed with orange juice.

“You have no idea how much those I represent value punctuality, not to mention discretion; I find that the two seem to go hand-in-hand.”

“We can see that,” said Jackal evenly.

“You may call me Dimitri, the thing of it is my business partners would not have tasked me with setting up this meeting if a certain someone had not been making too much of a nuisance of himself and it would also seem that same personage is familiar with your work. So, shall we already share something in common, no?”

“No name-dropping,” replied Hyena, ‘but I bet I can hazard a pretty good guess on what you’re getting at. Where do we come in?” Hyena was feeling a bit on edge but she forced herself to refrain from cracking her knuckles; instead she grabbed her glass of whiskey and took a hearty sip of the amber-colored liquor swirling around inside the tumbler.

The man who had identified himself as Dimitri stole a glance around the crowded tavern and then looked back at the brother and sister team; either he had already been informed by his superiors of their ’enhanced’ appearance or he was too polite to make a big deal about it. 

“A shipment is coming in tonight at 1900 hours, from Kiev, and one which our firm would be most distressed to lose out on delivery to our business rivals. We would like you two to safeguard it and make certain that it reaches these shores safely,” explained Dimitri.

“Do we get a look at the cargo manifest?” asked Jackal. “It might help to know what we were guarding.”

“Only upon delivery,” said Dimitri.

“Okay,” said Hyena, “We’ll do it, now let’s talk about payment arrangements.”

“Half now, half upon completion of the job,” the man in the fedora replied evenly, “I believe that is more than fair compensation, is it not?”

Jackal nodded. “I guess, so, yeah. But there’s still one thing that bothers me about all of this.

“Which is?” inquired Dimitri.

“Well, two things. The name of the ship, why you won’t tell us the name of the company that you work for, and what’s so special about this cargo that we’re guarding.”

“All valid questions,” said the older man,’ and ones that should be addressed, the ship is called “the Volusia.” Our company is called “Romanov Enterprises with the Red Room label.”

“Vodka?”

“Yes, but that’s only part of it. The most important part is not so much a what as it is a who; but that’s all you need to know for the present.”

“Then it’s agreed,” said Hyena.

“Yes, yes, it is,” agreed Dimitri.  
****  
They arrived at the docks forty five minutes before the time that the “Volusia” was due in to port, just to give them a cushion and to give them the opportunity to make certain of the lay of the land and to see if anyone else was around that might have designs on the ship and its cargo. 

They had commandeered a punt and rowed out to meet the ship before it moored. The moon shone brightly down like the eye of glinting cat, and made their shadows stretch out behind them in a pool of liquid ink. 

Hyena was in good spirits, at this point it appeared that this would be one their most straight-forward jobs, get in, get out, secure the cargo, and make sure that whoever was here to collect the cargo checked out, and then get paid. Easy enough, right?

Once aboard the grizzled captain in a great-coat and wading boats greeted them gruffly and let them aboard once they showed the piece of paper with the logo of the “Red Room” company to him, and on Jackal’s part a very poor version in Russian, ‘of Dimitri sent us.’

The captain, identified himself as Sasha Temara,’ said ‘We’’ll get the vodka off-loaded, you two can help. As for the other matter, well it can shift for itself.”

“It?” 

“Look, Dimitri may vouch for you, but what you don’t know, you can’t give away,” muttered Temara.” 

Jackal and Hyena moved to help Temara and his crew maneuvers the casks of vodka up from the hold, and down the ramp to the loading docks, where men in uniforms were waiting with a truck and a man with a clipboard was waiting to receive shipment. Speaking in Russian, a conversation and an exchange of significant glances passed between Temara’s crew and the men on the shore.

“So far, this doesn’t seem too bad. I must say it’s more legit than some of the other things we’ve been hired to do,” said Hyena.  
“  
Below decks a figure clad in black and red emerged from a box, shaking the dust and packing materials, its hair was long and almost down to its back, and it moved with cat-like reflexes. At one time the figure’s hair might have been red but it would have been difficult to make it out in the dim lighting of the otherwise empty cargo hold.   
Wrenching open the door to corridor with slightly more force than was strictly necessary she moved up the stairs through the ship and up to the foredeck.

**  
She came up onto the deck in time to see the last of the crew with two others finish completion of the delivery of the vodka. It was expensive stuff, and very rare, but hardly her concern. If her handlers wish to use a legitimate company like the Red Room Bottling Corporation and its partners Romanov Enterprises as a means to an end, that was their affair. She had been trained to be discrete, to take her orders and not ask questions. 

Still, she thought it was interesting that they were employing proxies with enhancements these days; maybe they were interesting in out-sourcing. In the back of her mind, she thought, ‘Not a bad idea, that. It never hurt to change up things every now and again.”

She could tell that the pair of new hires were American, both by their accents and body-language, but it was also curious that they had been given a lot of high-tech technology upgrades. Why anyone would voluntarily undergo such treatment was not something she could understand, but if her briefing was correct they were he ticket to the man who was her target.  
She sidled up to them, hands at her sides, the twin pairs of snub-nosed Beretta guns still in their holsters.

“You, there.”

“Hey, you startled me,” Hyena shouted.

“Keep your voice down,” the Russian operative chided.

“You the one with the money,” asked Jackal.

“Later” she said. “Right now I need a ride to the Eyrie Building. No questions asked, got it?”

“Sure, we’ll get out of here and hail a taxi,” drawled Jackal. “What you want with that place anyway?”

“No questions, just do as you’re told,” the Russian said.

“Look, lady, I don’t take orders from anyone I don’t know!” Jackal blustered.

“The name’s Black Widow, no hop to it.”

“She’s going to the Eyrie building, she arrives on undocumented and in secret on a ship from Kiev, and starts barking orders like she owns the place,” muttered Hyena. “And she wants us to help her, what do you   
say, bro. Shall we do it?”

“My guess is she’s going after ‘you know who? Sure, if she wants a crack at ole-Money Bags, I say more power to her. Let’s do it.”


	3. There's a Certain Slant of Light

“And here I thought it would be tough,” the red-haired woman remarked and then added, ‘Do you think that there’s room enough in there for his ego?”

“Not that I’ve ever noticed, but you might have considered adding a jet-pack on in your luggage just in case, unless you got wings,” retorted Jackal. “Otherwise it’s a long climb to the top.”

“You’re kidding, right?” asked Natasha.

Jackal and Hyena exchanged a significant look and Hyena threw back her head and then she uttered a short chuffing laugh which had been one of the main reasons she had been dubbed Hyena in the first place. 

Noticing the impatient look in the Russian woman’s eyes Hyena stopped laughing and then tugged a strand of the loose red hair and grasped it between her fingers. “You really have no idea, do you? And no, we were only half-kidding about being able to fly.”

“You still gonna go through with it?” asked Jackal idly, loose-limbed in the driver’s seat and pulling the commandeered taxi off the main stretch of freeway and off to one side. 

Natasha considered both the strange amalgam of cutting edge tech that glinted in the early morning sunshine and the flesh and blood around his non-enhanced eye for a moment as she considered her response, then said: “Have you ever reneged on a contract?”

“Yes, well, no, not really,” he sputtered. “There were extenuating circumstances.”

“Hey, relax,” she urged. “I didn’t mean that as a reproach, it was a rhetorical question.”

“Hey, not to be a wet blanket or anything,” interrupted Hyena, ‘and I hate to break up this gab-fest, but we got you here, that means we get paid, right?”

“Oh, of course,” replied Natasha, reaching into her pocket for the promised payment and handing Hyena a thick manila envelope saying, “For your trouble.”

Then she got out of the taxi and out onto the curb, craning her neck to look up at the building.

She had believed in moving forward and never looking back so she did not feel the least bit inclined to look back and see what the brother and sister mercenaries were doing. It was none of her business now that they had their money that was the end of their involvement as far as she was concerned.

**

“Do you think she’ll pull it off?” asked Jackal.

“How should I know,” retorted Hyena.

“Don’t snap at me, I was just wondering. Do you want bet on it?”

“No, and don’t mention it again,” Jackal muttered. 

“What’s got you so jittery all of a sudden?”

“Hey, I won’t lie to you, sis. I wanted the big man dead as much as you do…” he trailed off.

“I suppose I’ve toyed with the idea of ridding the world of Xanatos every now and again and it’s not that I don’t lack the guts, it’s just that,” she shrugged her heels clicking against the pavement in counterpoint to the creak of and whirring of her cybernetic parts. It’s just that I get the feeling that it would be like tempting fate, like throwing David into the lion’s den, get it?”

Jackal did not respond immediately as he mulled the idea over in his own mind and then he slowly nodded. “I think I catch your drift. Even when we were the Pack and I think we knew where or rather who was bank-rolling us there was never any question that it would be easy to get rid of the man.”

“We haven’t done too badly on our own,” mused Hyena.

“Wait a second, Sis,” interrupted Jackal, “What you said just now about the feeling that we were like David thrown into the lion’s den, it got me thinking and it reminded me of how we got into this position in the first place.”

“Yeah! So what?”

“So, if you’ll trouble to recall, this whole thing started with some kind of implicit threat/challenge by Fox, correct?”

It took a while for Hyena to follow her brother’s chain of thought, before it occurred to her that maybe, just maybe that Fox could have set this whole thing up as some kind of elaborate game of chess with the people involved as living playing pieces. If she was right, it was twisted and the kind of sick mind games that Fox and her new hubby seemed to relish. “I hope not, but I guess I wouldn’t put it past her. I never trusted her, and that hasn’t changed one jot.”

“Good, but do you think we should mention it to our new red-haired friend?” he asked.

“Nah, she seems to me like a big girl and she can take care of herself,” replied Hyena. “Let’s go home. 

“And the money?” asked Jackal.

“Pieces in a game or not, as far as I’m concerned, the money all spends the same, right?”

Jackal grinned, “Exactly my thoughts. Let’s get out here.”


End file.
